


vines around my ribs

by magisterequitum



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-12
Updated: 2012-10-12
Packaged: 2017-11-16 04:15:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/535374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/pseuds/magisterequitum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>damon tries his best to ignore elena, figures it's turning a new page over. unfortunately, elena has other ideas. set post 3.22, before 4.01.</p>
            </blockquote>





	vines around my ribs

He finds her in his bed.

Finds because he literally finds her there, though maybe it’s better to say he comes upon her there because it’s not like he’s been looking for her. In fact, he’s been doing everything that’s the opposite of looking for her. He’s kept himself busy. Cleaning Ric’s apartment, drinking, packing all of Ric’s things up in boxes, drinking, sitting in Ric’s apartment, going to the Grill and looting out their entire stock of whiskey once Ric’s bourbon supply had been drained. The liquor does nothing for his rage except act as a punishment for all the things he failed to do. It’s fitting somehow. He likes the story of it, and most importanly it’s kept him from having to look at the dead girl who isn’t really dead. He just can’t anymore. All of it seems to be too much and he’s just done.

Lately he’s taken on Liz’s request for help against the more zealous members of the Council. Refraining from killing them all out right, tempting for sure, he’s settled for planning and waiting. He makes rounds of the town each night.

Damon’s in the process of slipping his jacket from his shoulders when he notices the lump under his comforter. He freezes and strains his ears. There’s no noise from elsewhere in the house, the other rooms, Stefan’s room, downstairs, the basement or anywhere. From here he can see the dark hair that spills out over his pillow.

He swallows the anger that rises in him, feels it surge and twist its way up his spine. He wants to chase her from his bed, toss her out of his room, because she doesn’t get to do this. She doesn’t get to pick him after choosing Stefan to teach her everything, after giving him the sad eyes and telling him firmly that she needed to do it this way.

Apparently she does though because she’s Elena Gilbert and he can’t say no.

The anger deflates as quick as it had risen.

He doesn’t wake her and make her get out, but he does leave.

Damon pretends he doesn’t hear the scritch of his sheets moving and the sleepy murmur of his name.

 

-

 

The next time he doesn’t have a chance to walk back out.

Elena’s awake and waiting on him, her skinny fingers twisting the fabric of his comforter as she sits against the headboard. Again, there’s no one else in the house.

Damon watches her from the doorway, shucking his leather jacket like before and letting it slide down to hang from one hand.

Her eyes widen at the sight of him and a hesitant smile begins at the corners of her mouth. “Hi,” she says softly.

He drapes the jacket over the back of a chair. “Hi.” It’s not a particularly good response, kind of lame, but it’s better than the ten questions that buzz on his tongue. He’s done with those too, asking questions since they never give him the answers he wants.

She bites at her lip. He can see the circles under her eyes, the fatigue that clings around her, the sadness. It’s not hard to see. Her fingers fidget and she sighs, blurting out, “It’s quiet here.” His eyebrows shoot up, and she must see his confusion because she hurries on. “Everyone else they want something from me, but it’s quiet here.”

His face contorts and something curls up inside of him. “So you just thought you’d invade my bed because what? Because you can? ‘Cause I’m not asking something of you?”

Elena blinks at his anger, her lips parting in shock at his vehemence. “No, that’s not it-”.

“Then what?” He throws his hands up.

She sighs and looks away towards the darkened windows. A bird screeches in the night somewhere. She looks back to him and her eyes are huge in the black of his room and to his gaze. “It’s just quiet here.”

As if to prove her words, he can find nothing to say in return, and so silence saturates the air in the room. They’re locked in an staring contest and he hates it. Hates it because this is unfamiliar. They’re all about the fighting and the yelling: he does something to prove he’s the dick he is and she calls him out on it, that’s them. He wants to smash something just to reset the balance.

True to her though, she smashes it herself and sets him on his ass.

“Will you stay with me?”

Damon nearly laughs because she’s asking him to stay with her in his own bed, in his own house, as if it’s hers. It might as well be so quick he is to cave.

His only relief is how he most definitely does not touch her once he lies down as well.

 

-

 

They start doing this.

Or more like Elena keeps showing up in his bed and he keeps sleeping next to her, so yeah, they start doing this thing.

They just lie there. Silent, not speaking. Her with her eyes closed and body curved towards his side and him with a dozen queries clogging the back of his throat.

He lets them choke him.

 

-

 

“Damon,” she whispers one night, and he opens his eyes to find her staring at him. The long curve of her bare neck stretches over the pillow. “Why do you let me do this?”

He grunts and huffs out in reply, “Do what?”

“Let me use you like this?” The question falls from her lips with zero preamble. The sound of it’s heavy and loud despite how even her voice had been.

Oh, he thinks, so shy-Elena had departed for in-charge-Elena. About time. He’s been wondering where she’d gone. He thinks she’s being hard, harsh and blunt and challenging. He can serve it right back too. “What else would I do?”

That side of the bed stays quiet for the rest of the night. In the morning she’s gone before he wakes.

 

-

 

She stops coming to see him.

His bed is empty for the next four nights. After the second hour on the first night, he realizes he can’t sleep in it. It makes him so angry he shreds the sheets and leaves it in ruin just in case she does come back. Let her have nothing, he thinks, so she can have just as much as he does. Briefly the thought of finding Stefan enters his mind, but he remembers that brother dearest has been busy helping Bonnie lately.

He takes up his old haunt of walking the perimeters of the town again.

The Gilbert residence is given a wide berth.

 

-

 

Damon wakes to the feeling of his wrists being snatched and pulled over his head. Brown eyes peer down at him, so close they’re all he sees, but he knows who they belong to.

Elena has him pinned by her hold on his wrists and her hips straddling his own.

“You miss me this much?”

Her eyes narrow and she switches her grip so that one hand comes down and covers his mouth. “Hush. I want to talk and you are going to listen.”

He could easily buck her off. Have her against the wall or on the floor in the time it would take her to blink. He’s older and stronger. Damon does nothing though. He goes still and tense on the bare mattress he hadn’t gotten around to getting new linens for yet.

She waits till she’s certain he won’t try anything and then pulls her head back so that he can see all of her now. “I think you misunderstood what I said the other day. The first night when I stayed here, when I said that it was quiet here, I meant that. But I don’t think you understood what I meant.”

Her hand’s still over his mouth so he blinks at her for a signal to continue.

Elena stares down at him, her face set in some sort of determinative manner, her jaw tight. “Everyone wants something out of me, to be this type of vampire, and it’s too much. But you don’t. You’ve not asked anything of me.”

Part of him wants to say that ‘d’uh, because he’s been hiding from her’ and that he has a whole list of ways he wants her to act.

“So when I said that it was quiet here, I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”

He’s still not been allowed to speak. He dips his head down.

“I need you, Damon.”

All of his muscles go limp, his body draining of its tension. It’s amazing how hardwired he is to this girl.

Elena holds his eyes for another minute and then removes both of her hands. She waits and when he does nothing she slides down his body until she’s lying on top of him.

He holds her while she sleeps, his eyes affixed to the ceiling long after her own drift shut.

 

-

 

The next night Damon doesn’t bother getting in on one side. He’s in the middle with his arms open for her when she comes in.


End file.
